Wednesday, 16 March 2016

SAINTS PRESERVE US

A Bit of a Pickle

The
setting is an ornate corner office rich with polished rainforest wood and
antique furniture. If the mechanized vertical window coverings were open you
could almost see Europe, Canada
for sure if you looked to the left. This aerie is the uppermost of the
toppermost. There is exercise equipment, a fully stocked bar and an alarmingly
large statue of a creepy corporate mascot proffering a tray of double-decker
hamburgers. The following transcript is a meGeoff world exclusive and was obtained through the
inadvertent courtesy of one of the allied Five Eyes signals intelligence agencies; somebody pocket dialed their new Apple
iPhone 6S.

Administrative Assistant: Mistress?

Chief Executive Officer: Come in, Minion.
We might as well get down to it. What was Wall Street’s verdict on last
quarter’s results?

AA: Ah, gee, below analysts’ expectations.
Our same store performance here at home is perceived as stagnant rather then
steady, although that disappointment was offset somewhat by our increasing
overseas sales in Third World markets.

CEO: And how has this affected our
shareholders?

AA: Share prices have dropped a few points
since the announcement and media subsequent reaction.

CEO: What are we really talking about here?

AA: About one or two cents per unit.

CEO: Oh for fuck’s sake; who the fuck is
Citibank or Goldman-Sachs to tell me how to run my company? They don’t sell
fucking hamburgers, do they? They’d have to buy them from us, wouldn’t they?
Who fed the families living in their cars at a reasonable price during the Wall
Street-induced 2008 recession, fuck me, for fuck’s sake!

AA: Yes, Mistress.

CEO: Just for fun, tell me what they’re
saying.

AA: Ah, gee, there are a couple of
suggestions out there. One is that we expand our menu offerings in the wake of
increased and varied competition in the quick service industry.

AA: Ah, essentially yes, I guess. The other
is growth through acquisition, perhaps an unfriendly takeover of a synergistic
complementary competitor.

CEO: Synergy means a clash of entrenched
corporate cultures. So then we start closing redundant stores and putting
people out of work. Piss off every engaged consumer who, for whatever idiotic
reason, likes us on Facebook. Genius. Look at Sobeys’ buy of Safeway up in Canada. Both
banners have lost customers. They can’t sell ice to hockey players. And that
scenario would never dilute the value of our brand, would it? Mixing brands and
logos? Our brand image only took 60 years to assemble, painstakingly, a nudge
or a suggestion at a time. So fuck it? Chuck it through somebody else’s
drive-thru window, is that what they want?

AA: Ah, Mistress? We could always do the
usual and slash our own middle management? Double the survivors’ workloads while
adding hidden tasks to their existing job descriptions? HR's all over it. We’d recoup those
pennies in the eyes of the analysts.

CEO: Put the pennies on their eyes! Minion,
you know more about Hamburgers 4 U than I do. We can’t keep getting rid of the
knowledge base that actually makes this company function. Fuck me.

AA: Yes, Mistress.

CEO: Stop it! That was just an expression,
not an order. White male sexist little monkey. Christ, we’re talking about two cents a share here, maybe one. Do
up a press release. Say something like we stand by the best hamburger in the
world. Add the standard bullshit about how we work with our vendors, no,
partners, especially American farmers, for locally sourced, organic, quality –
you know, valued customers, loyalty, the usual blah-blah-blah.

AA: Will do. And one other thing? There’s
the board meeting tonight.

CEO: Thanks for the reminder, I totally
forgot. What’s the main item on the agenda?

AA: Ah, gee, endemic childhood obesity in America and our
role in perpetuating it. In terms of litigation, we’re right up there with the
tobacco and soda companies. Do we settle or go to court?

CEO: You know, Minion, one of the reasons
I’ve always been content with sustained, status quo, same store sales is
because nobody’s supposed to eat six hamburgers a day. Hamburgers 4 U has always
been positioned as a treat, a time for families to get together. We’ve never
been about a couple of extra cents for stakeholders. Why the fuck don’t these
people sue RCA for inventing colour TV or Microsoft for X-Box? Who makes
couches and Oreo cookies? And Apple; by the way, where is my iPhone? Oops, I’m
sitting on it. Anyway, those fucking parents should sue themselves for raising
a waddling generation of fucking anemic diabetics who never went outside and
played ball. Nobody takes any responsibility for their own actions or worse,
their own inactions. I am so fucking tired of victims. Everybody’s a fucking
victim.

AA: Yes, Mistress.

CEO: Sorry, lost it there for a moment.
Fuck, Minion, ain’t this America?
Nobody sues Colt or Smith and Wesson, just a hamburger chain, like we’re the
fucking bad guys. We sell tasty, reasonably priced specialty food; they sell
death. Fuck.

AA: Ah, gee, yes, Mistress. Of course the
sodium levels in our meals are abnormally high. And we do partner with film
franchises and toy companies from time to time.

CEO: That press release? Add this: tell the
world we’ll add more sugar to all of our condiments, add pink slime, cereal and
steroids to our beef, guarantee traces of nuts in everything we serve, we hope
unsupervised small children will choke on bits of plastic and we’ll upsize all
of our fountain soda containers. Fuck ‘em all.

AA: Ah, gee, maybe Mistress would like to
take a moment and contemplate Her last instruction? May I suggest an internal
e-mail which perhaps I could afterward arrange to have wiped from the company
servers?

CEO: Brilliant, Minion. You are the brains
of the operation. Give me a cigarette. Thanks, it’s lit, yes. Oh my, Christ,
that’s good. I dream about the day when we’ll be able to sell cigarettes,
alcohol and pot alongside the world’s best hamburger. Think of it, Minion!
They’d be fiddling with themselves on Wall Street.

AA: I think they already do, Mistress.

CEO: Anything else?

AA: One last thing. There are concerns on
social media regarding the gender equality of the washrooms in our stores. Some
people are confused, a very small percentage.

CEO: Oh Christ, you’re not making this up,
are you?

AA: Ah, gee, alas, no.

CEO: All right, all right, let’s just put a
generic toilet sign on all of the doors. Done.

AA: But some of the washrooms will have
urinals, some won’t.

CEO: Fuck ‘em. I don’t care if you stand,
squat or sit to piss. If you gotta go, you make do. Put a sign or two in every
toilet telling everybody to clean up after themselves and to leave the space
tidy for the next user. Flush! Who the fuck cares about anything else?

AA: I’ll tack on a genderless washroom
initiative to the official press release, shall I?

CEO: Yes, great idea. The press’ll eat that
shit up. Oh, and tell them we’re all about free run eggs too or whatever the
fuck they are. Happy bacon! So, we’re done?

AA: Oh, I’m sorry, Mistress, I forgot to
mention that Donald Trump is still calling about his proposed Make America
Great Again Signature Halal Cabo Trump Fiesta Burger. He keeps going on about
orange American cheese. It’s ‘great’ or ‘huge’ or something, like his brand of
steaks and vodka.

CEO: Tell him to fuck off permanently and
leave us alone. Actually, check that. I’ll phone him myself. I need to blow off
some steam or I’ll get violent.